I really enjoyed this. Its a topic often attempted though I feel you have excelled. The imagery in the first part is vivid and really evokes the complexity of emotion felt. The middle provides great contrast in its simple statements advances the piece.

I think personally the final part needs more work. This is probably because I understand it less than the rest of the piece and is therefore quite likely more my fault as a reader, though I do feel it lacks the power of the imagery at the beginning and the brilliant bluntness of statement of the middle.

Wait, poetry month is an actual thing? And here I was just doing that because I felt like it. Go figure.

Regarding the poem, I'd say you generally do quite a solid job portraying the 'gap' that people tend to feel. All too often, there is that emptiness which seems impossible to fill, and an inexplicable urge to do something, anything, if only it will break through the nothing. Your description of that sensation - especially in the first stanza, with its simply brutal metaphors - is spot-on, and I can't find any fault in it.

I also very much like your unusual use of line length and punctuation to keep things moving. If I must name a negative, it would be that the hyphens don't look right. They're trying to cover for an actual em-dash, but because of the spacing, they just look a bit awkward instead. I'd recommend sticking a space between the hyphens and the preceding words, unless that was intentional.

Nitpicks aside, though, this was an impressive piece of work all-round, and well worth the time of reading. Thanks for sharing it with us.

This is simply not good poetry, in my opinion. It's someone trying to write poetically. Poetry is more powerful when it has some kind of structure. This is a perfect example of why modern poetry is virtually dead.

I understand that this is your opinion on "modern poetry," but why share this thought on one particular poem? If you like poetry with meter, then go read it and comment on that. There's no reason to bash someone else's art form. ESPECIALLY on a specific work. You didn't have a single positive thing to say about this piece, so, therefore, this wasn't even an attempt to critique. Honestly, this was just rude of you. Kayla writes in her own style just like ee cummings, Bryon, Plath, etc wrote in theirs. This is FREEVERSE. THIS IS HER WORK. She is allowed to write as she wants. She doesn't write to serve her audience, and she shouldn't.

freeverse is a form that needs to have a structure of its own, thats why its often times the more trying way to write. if the previous commenter were trying to be constructive he or she would have to say that the form of the poem should contain some sort of structure which mirrors the intended meaning of the poem.

not only that but lack of such meaning in the form is distracting and hinders the intent of the author. unless the intention were to portray a feeling of confusion or of a void (which seems to be the meaning here, but in my opinion there could be more here which is not getting across as well as it should) the structure does not make the optimal amount of logical sense, and so has the potential to take away from the impact of semantics. in an art such as poetry in which the form most often takes the spotlight, it is no wonder that poetry in the past was reduced to metered and predictable form and rhyme scheme. think of freeverse as its evolution into something more intricate, and requiring more responsibility.

I feel like I relate to this way more than I should. Like, the "I didn't grab for sharp objects, I just wrote about it", and the "I didn't know I wanted to be a writer until I lost something (my mind maybe)... This is really beautiful and perfect. It makes me want to draw.